


Exile

by i_claudia



Series: Gentlemen of Quality [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-03
Updated: 2009-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:00:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And maybe it shouldn’t feel like a betrayal, that Arthur goes when Merlin wants him to stay, but it does, and Merlin hates that it does, hates that someone has so much power over him that he doesn’t hesitate to fall to his knees and plead, his hand reaching out for Arthur’s own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exile

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/37355.html). (3 November 2009)

The night is hot and close around him, and Arthur skin slides easily against his own, sweat gleaming between the stripes of shadow the moon sends through the open window. Merlin can smell the jungle air through the musky haze of sex: the sweet, heavy scent of jasmine and distant charcoal smoke, and he hates it, hates that he can hear the howl of monkeys in the distance and the buzz of mosquitoes in his ear instead of the comforting rumble of London.

They aren’t supposed to be here, in the middle of this godforsaken continent, months away from the whirl of the glittering society Arthur belongs to. They’re supposed to be dodging hansom cabs as they run across a street to the theatre, not watching for deadly snakes disguised in the dust of the earth. Merlin growls, tightens his grip on Arthur’s wrists and drives his hips forward, taking out his frustrations on Arthur, splayed out wanton and groaning beneath him. 

He doesn’t want to trumpet who he is from the rooftops, doesn’t want to march anywhere or hang up signs or even tell his family. Even if the world were different, if his love were legal, not something whispered about in dark corners, he wouldn’t want to share it. He’s more selfish than that. All he wants is Arthur, tight and trembling around him, feeling more like home than any place Merlin’s been.

He wants the little hitching gasps Arthur gives when Merlin rolls his hips just right, wants the sight of Arthur’s fingers clenching desperately at soft white sheets, needs to be able to bend down and run his tongue along the curve of Arthur’s neck, drag his teeth across the bumps of Arthur’s spine. Merlin wants everything Arthur is: his sleepy kisses in the morning when one side of his face is still striped red from pressing into his pillow, the glorious fury of his injured pride when something goes wrong, they way he looks at Merlin sometimes when he thinks Merlin isn’t paying attention, as if Merlin holds the sun in one hand and his heart in the other. 

Merlin wants all of that, and he wants it for himself. All of London knows Arthur’s a little wild, out all night carousing but somehow up and walking the floors of his father’s factory every morning exactly on time. All of England, it seems, knows about his secret heartbreaks; all of England expressed its righteous outrage when his greatest love fled, left him standing lonely at the altar. Nothing Arthur does is ever private, except for this.

Merlin’s the only one who gets to see the scars layered under Arthur’s skin, the only one allowed to run his fingers down Arthur’s ribs and up the inside of his thighs, make him shudder, shake apart beneath the lightest touch. Merlin’s the only living human who can see Arthur entirely naked and exposed, and the knowledge fizzes under his skin, fills him with wonder and crushing fear until he has to kiss Arthur to make the room stop whirling around them.

Merlin doesn’t want to share Arthur, but he loves to watch Arthur move through parties, dances, sailing calm and composed from conversation to conversation, bestowing light touches and smiles and never giving a single thing away. This, traveling until England is just a distant memory of fog and tinkling laughter, this feels like being cast out, like pulling a funereal shroud over Arthur’s brightness. 

Arthur pretends it’s just another adventure, this time with the added pleasure of getting to hunt things larger and more deadly than himself, but all Merlin can think is _you don’t belong here, we aren’t meant for this_. They’d fought about it, hushed shouts behind locked doors, accusations and Arthur’s cold finality: _if it displeases you so much, perhaps you should stay behind_.

Merlin isn’t stupid. He knows Uther disapproves of his son’s friendship with Merlin, knows this extended visit to the indigo plantations which supply the Pendragon factories was meant to separate them. And maybe it shouldn’t feel like a betrayal, that Arthur goes when Merlin wants him to stay, but it does, and Merlin hates that it does, hates that someone has so much power over him that he doesn’t hesitate to fall to his knees and plead, his hand reaching out for Arthur’s own. He hates that it didn’t make a difference.

He can’t hate Arthur, though, can’t bring himself to hate the only thing that matters anymore, and so he hates the steamship that brought them here instead, where Arthur was a room and a world away and their fellow passengers were always everywhere, watching with greedy eager eyes. He hates this place, with its strange plants and stranger animals, not a proper gentlemen’s club in sight. In London he might have had to wake up earlier than the maids, slip out of Arthur’s room in the grey moments before dawn to avoid suspicion, but here the air itself is stifling, heavy and thick in his lungs.

He hates the other Englishmen here, hates the jokes he can’t quite figure out, the air of nonchalant entitlement they exude about everything. He doesn’t understand the language, doesn’t understand what Arthur’s saying when he’s deep in discussion with their host and the plantation manager and glances back just once to look at Merlin, bored and uncomfortable in his white trousers and toying with the strap of Arthur’s pith helmet. Even the English they speak here is barely comprehensible, and when Arthur takes to it all like he takes to everything he tries, Merlin’s left alone, isolated even at their welcoming dinner party, when he has to flee to the balcony because he can’t breathe in the overwhelming press of chatter.

The words he needs don’t exist even inside his own head, and so he tries to say them like this, their bodies sliding together in the night, Arthur moaning into his pillow to muffle the sound, Merlin tightening his fingers until red-purple bruises surface on Arthur’s skin in a sickening kind of reassurance – _this is real, this is who we are_. Merlin’s never more focused than when they’re like this, bends his head until his forehead brushes Arthur’s skin and gives and gives until Arthur’s moans turn sharper, just this side of sobbing; until Arthur breaks and says _I want_ and _I need_ and _Merlin, Merlin, please_ , the cracks in his voice driving Merlin finally into a fierce, spiraling kind of rapture.

When it’s done, when they both lie quiet and spent beneath the mosquito netting of the bed, listening to the darkness breathe beside them, Merlin turns his head and watches Arthur, retracing the strength in his jaw, the pride in the curve of his nose, and there’s an aching kind of terror in his heart, inexpressible and raw to the touch. He fights against it, squeezes it into one small corner, because if he lets it go he knows the fear will poison more than it already has.

Arthur’s still warm and near beside him, his fingers barely brushing against Merlin’s own, and that’s enough for now. Merlin curls deeper into that reassurance, pressing his lips to Arthur’s shoulder, and closes his eyes against the night.


End file.
